Reflections

Looking back at Barebones 2013...

Photos

If you have any photos of the weekend that you'd like to share, load them into Flickr and tag them with "orienteerapp922". Then they'll automagically show up on the "photos" page on this website, on the RESULTS drop-down menu.

Letters from participants

Thanks to all for an excellent event! The info for this year's Barebones said the distance from the 1x intersection to the landfill access road was 1.5 km. I measured it as between 3.2 and 3.3 km.----------------------------

I'm very glad I came to Barebones. Hope to continue the tradition.Thank you to all your crew.-----------------------------

Congratulations. Barebones was quite a success. Lots of smiling kids, great courses and challenging. Please thank the rest of the organizing committee.-----------------------------

Thanks for your work organizing BB. It was super--just like always.-----------------------------

We're all just about recovered from Barebones and we'd like to say a big thank you to the organisers of this event! The Friday evening game of "Clue" was great fun for adults and kids. I've never really explored downtown Canmore but this event sorted that out in a hurry! I thought that Saturday was a great balance of competition and fun for the kids. Both of my boys really enjoyed the "Cup-cake O". I know that two competitive events in one day was enough for my oldest son, so having the relaxed, fun event at the end was really good for him.And , of course, a really big thank you to Alix for making all those cookie medals!We look forward to next year's event. PS Now my wife wants to learn more about orienteering and participate in the Wednesday evening events! I'm going to have to keep a close eye on my thumb compass to make sure it doesn't disappear!-----------------------------

Many thanks for another fun Barebones. We appreciate all the work of you and your other volunteers! When we opened the results yesterday, there still seemed to be some problems. e.g., my Chase time was listed as 34:18, but my split print-out says 31:53. Angela's wondering if there might have been a problem with the starts in the Chase, as she was behind people she didn't expect to be and ahead of people she didn't expect to be.--Will, too, was confused and thought he had some 8 minutes more to wait than he actually did.One thought for the future might be to consider reducing the total distances (or climb!) -- it might be okay for the elites, but I had over 2 hours at aerobic & anaerobic heart rates for the 3 events on the Saturday, and I didn't orienteer too badly that day.Anyway, overall a good time and good courses! Once again, thanks to all![REPLY FROM ORGANIZER:

but you won a medal in the last race, so I think the physicality suited you ;) but I agree - three was too many starts

your online splits won't match your print out splits because printer was not hooked up to computer so didn't know your start time. The first time on the print out is when you pinched control one, not when you started your race. Hence your total time on the printed splits will be shorter than your actual total running time. Not that the print-out is correct for event where you punch at the start line (eg: the Setup race).

regarding later than expected start times in the chase - the original plan was to start people at 12:00 plus setup time. but software didn't support that easily. so with elk delays we had to go with the easy software option - which was all category winners start at 12:20. This had the effect of delaying everyone's start time from what we'd planned.

glad you could make it! thanks for the feedback

AZ]-----------------------------

We should have a Summer Barebones and a Winter Barebones!-----------------------------

these made me smile this morning.... [comment on seeing the photos on the Barebones 2013 website]-----------------------------

Reflections from the Event Director

Here are some thoughts about the Barebones weekend from the Event Director

What would Toni say? - Race AnalysisWe were lucky to have Canadian National Team coach Toni Louhisola taking part in Barebones. Toni is a strong believer that a simple post-race analysis will develop better orienteering skills and processes. His message is that good orienteering comes from good planning. Following his program, this is what you should do to get the most improvement in future:

For each leg you ran during Barebones give yourself two scores in the range 0-5:

how good was your plan for that leg?

how good was your execution of the plan?

A simple way to do this is to make a table with two columns per leg, and write your scores in the table. Your goal should be to increase the average score in your next race - and to always have an average score of over 4.0

Try it out for the Barebones races. Talk about your scores with your friends, and compare your plans with theirs. Make this a habit and you will see rapid improvements in your orienteering

How did we (the organizers) do?We always try to learn from what we think went well and what didn't. For a complete catalog of Barebones organizers' mistakes check out this link: Mistakes we have Made. Here are some of our thoughts about Barebones 2013:

UrbanO - nice to have a fun, family focused event. Cool game. The "rooms" were too far apart.

Three races on Saturday. Okay, that was too much.

Head to head competitions. We wanted to give people a taste different from the usual "time-trial" staggered start. So we had a relay, a THOMASS, and a Chase. We are really happy with the way it worked. It seems racers enjoyed it - and as a bonus the elapsed time for each race is shorter than for interval start events.

Awards - gave responsibility to some of the older juniors. This was brilliant - great cookie medals, and well run awards. Only the relay awards were a mess - and that was the only one I was responsible for ;-(

Variety of terrain. We are aware that using the Nordic Centre year after year might be getting a little "old". Still, the logistics and the cooperation of the Nordic Centre make it a favorite for the organizers. We tried to give a different flavour to each race, and avoided the crazy bridge area (which is the organizers favorite). So we hope it was okay. We realize we need some new maps in Canmore - and there is some good terrain available. Still, overall, we felt there was a decent variety of terrain and orienteering "feel" in the various races.

Price - we think that $100 is a reasonable price, with big discounts for kids. It generates enough revenue that the organizers don't have to worry about every penny, and even creates a small profit that can be put toward more equipment or making/updating maps.

Atmosphere - we were delighted with the energy and positive atmosphere all weekend. Thanks to everyone for your enthusiastic participation! See you next year. Adrian Zissos.